V Dhyvia
As a professor from the Department of Mathematics, Baran Government College for Women, it was no surprise that even V Dhyvia would be sitting idly during the downtime of lockdown. It was then that a close friend introduced her to NPTEL, the e-learning platform of India.
Despite her background in Mathematics, her first NPTEL course was Introduction to Machine Learning in Computer Science by Professor Balaraman Ravindran. Impressed by the quality of pedagogy, she explored courses in her own domain of Pure Mathematics, a field of which the beauty of which she never fully appreciated while studying Applied Mathematics. Her first course here was Rings and Modules by Professor Krishna from CMI and through that, learnt about the domain certification. She went on to take course after course until she earned herself the domain certification.
Having completed her MTech in 2014 and worked in the institution as a guest lecturer, she was forced to take a break from education entirely due to problems back home. When those were ironed out, it was time to return and in order to regain her confidence and finesse in her domain, she took NPTEL courses and started studying from the basics like Group Theory and moved on to more advanced ones such as Algebraic Representational Theory, Algebraic Geometry and Commutative Algebra. Her usual study routine consisted of spending at least two hours a day on NPTEL courses, either in the morning or evening.
Her father has been a constant source of support and motivation, probing her to always keep learning.
Prior to this, she had struggled with the CSA and NET exams, repeatedly attempting them without qualifying and without being able to identify her weaknesses. NPTEL’s courses and examinations helped her identify her strengths and weaknesses across subjects and specific topics. With this newfound clarity, she eventually cleared the exam with an AIR of 69.
Her experience in learning has been comfortable, with both recorded and live sessions, with the latter allowing for question solving and doubt clearing. She got selected as a NPTEL Star the previous year and holding that microphone on the stage was an experience that helped her overcome her life-long stage fright. Beyond the credentials themselves, these experiences motivated her to explore advanced topics and research papers, developing in her a proclivity for research. She is currently exploring research in the fields of Commutative and Geometric Algebra.
From her years of experience and pedagogy alongside NPTEL, she can confidently say that the courses motivate to keep the basics strong and keep broadening the scope of topics learnt.
She encourages lifelong learning and staying in touch with one’s educational field.
This allows a person to give an exam without extensive preparation, relying solely on revision and strong foundational domain knowledge. Last December, she cleared an exam conducted by the Teacher Recruitment Management Board of Tamil Nadu, the result of which she says is due to NPTEL’s strong guidance. As such, she advises her fellow peers and students to begin exploring the diverse catalogue of NPTEL.
~written by Krishneal Dutta